If one looks one Ebay you see a seemingly thriving market for money and items and even characters for any of the online games popular these days, and even ones i have never heard of. Is this practice legal? Unethical? I wonder because of long disclaimers in some of the auctions I have seen.
In any of the games I’ve played buying currency and items for use in game is against the EULA. If you get caught you can get banned from the game.
I’ve never done it, but I can’t imagine the chances of you getting snagged for it are that great.
I play Gemstone 4, and sometimes characters are offered for sale on eBay. GS will ban such characters if they find that one has changed hands, which is why you’ll see the names removed from the offers. Given that it’s almost comically easy to level a character up to about 15-20 in a couple of months, I’m amused at the offerings of seventh-level characters. I’ve never had problems accumulating money, either, and I don’t particularly go after rich prey.
Played EQ, EQ2, and currently WoW. In these games it’s always been against the eula/tos. It’s not legal and they do ban accounts if they find out. Several months ago WoW banned some thousands of accounts. The problem is them finding out. It seems in my experience they don’t catch on until pretty late in the game.
I seem to recall one game where an island and a space station were auctioned off for real-world money (with the idea that the purchasers could recoup their investment with licences and rentals). Am I misremembering?
Apparently I was not. The game being Project Entropia
I spoke to a lawyer from Electronic Arts about this a while ago, after a kid in China was killed by another kid for selling the murderer’s souped up sword from an on-line game. He says they have a technical solution to allow it to happen once, but not more than once.
I’ve only played Star Wars Galaxies, but I think this applies to most larger MMOs.
The “legality” of character sales depends on the game’s EULA (End User License Agreement). If the EULA says that in-game objects cannot be bought / sold, then anyone doing so will face consequences (usually banning of the account). AFAIK, most MMOs have this in their user agreement.
That being said, it’s completely up to the developer / distributor of the game on whether or not to ban this type of sale, or how diligintly they enforce it. Plus, some companies are looking at incorporating out-of-game sales into their business plan.
Sony Online (owners of EQ, EQ2, SWG, etc) recently set up the Station Exchange for EQ2. This is basically a sanctioned auction house to buy and sell in-game items, cash, and characters for real-world money. Sony takes a cut of the sale, and handles the transfer of goods in a secure manner.
Then there’s There (although it seems to be more of a “virtual world” MMO than a game), which apparently has a built-in mechanism to buy more ThereBucks for dollars.
As for how “ethical” it is…it depends on who you ask. It’s considered kosher to trade game items for game money, why (rhetorically) is it any different to trade game items for real-world money?
Basically, you can get practically anything in any MMO given a large enough time investment; whether it’s a level 90 warrior, 1 billion credits, or the Sword of Mighty Ub3RNess. Some players have the ability to invest larger chunks of play time than others (high school student vs. someone with a full-time job & family, for example). The argument has been made that all you’re doing with an eBay transaction is paying someone else for their time to acquire the item / character level / whatever. In fact, you’ll often see “disclaimers” on these auctions stating just that. It doesn’t necessarily make it legal, but it does make it fuzzier.